Works Well with Others

The landing was rough. There's no delicate way to put it - I was scared shitless. I looked over at my associate, Lyssa, in the seat next to me and noticed that she, too, was trying to put on a brave face. I tried to give a brave smile. but I knew she wasn't buying it.

Thunder and lightning crashed outside the window of the plane, the pitch-black skies turning the morning into night.

"Shit," I heard her mutter as the plane dropped and our stomachs twisted.

It was the first time I had seen her breach professional decorum, and had it been any other situation I probably would have made a wisecrack. I wasn't sure if she would have appreciated a little levity at the moment or not.

Actually, I think this plane could use some levity, I thought to myself.

Such bizarre thoughts when you feel like you're facing death.

I took a look down the aisle at the flight attendants who had been instructed to take their seats by the pilot. You know the turbulence is bad when they tell you that they're going to stop picking up the "cabin items" and ask you to just stuff them in the seat back pockets and put up the tables yourself.

"We'd like to ask that you check to make sure your neighbor has their tables up. We have been instructed to remain seated for the duration of the flight."

The duration of the flight isn't what I'm worried about, I thought. It's the termination that I'm nervous about.

Hell, even I didn't find that funny.

The plane dropped suddenly again, and Lyssa grabbed my hand. This was bad.

All kinds of thoughts were running through my head. My girlfriend, my dog, my ex-wife... was this the end? I looked at Lyssa and could see her eyes darting wildly from side to side, glancing out the window and then averting them just as quickly. She was taking deep breaths to calm herself.

The plane lifted into the air and we felt ourselves pushed into the seats.

My mind went blank. What, no witty remark? a thought came. Well, apparently there it was, just a little late.

Lyssa's professionalism refused to be completely abandoned though. She was the case manager for this project; I was just the hired gun. She had arrived at the airport for the early morning flight dressed as professional as always, and even now she looked far more calm and collected than she was. It was only her eyes that gave her unadulterated fear away.

The clouds broke outside the window and we found ourselves less than a hundred feet from the ground. Panic rose in my throat as I realized that the twisting, side to side motion of the plane meant that one wing was dangerously close to the ground. Visions of the Sioux City crash whipped through my head, where the plane had cartwheeled across the runway into a cornfield.

I felt Lyssa's hand squeeze mine in a deathgrip.

The plane righted itself just in time for the wheels to touch down on the pavement... and bounced. An updraft must have caught the plane and for a bizarre, brief moment it felt like the world was arcing from one side to the other. The pilot must have been manhandling the controls back to level because the plane struck earth once more, this time staying level.

The nose slowly lowered onto the ground and we felt the violent reverse thrust of the engines. The plane started slowing down, and I finally found my breath. I looked down to see Lyssa was looking straight ahead, her jaw taut and her breathing staccato.

She must have been taking stock of her situation and finally came to realize that she had been holding my hand with the force of heavy machinery. She let go and the blood rushed back to fill in the white fingermarks left by her hold.

She looked down at her vice grip and then back up at me. "Sorry," she said. She opened her mouth to make some excuse, but I waved it away.

"No problem," I said. "Completely understandable."

"You know, James," she said. "This is our first time working onsite together; if this is the kind of excitement that I can expect I'm not sure I'll want to do this again."

It was an attempt at a joke, and I smiled back at her, appreciating her effort even if the execution was understandably weak.

"I'll try and make it more dull from here on out," I said.

Lyssa was the project manager for major accounts for the Professional Services division of a major computer manufacturer. Her business card had the smallest type in the world just to fit her title on one side. I was an independent contractor who didn't work for her company, but was hired when the technical jobs needed to be outsourced.

Normally the work was local, which was fine. She and I worked and lived in the same city and that made for a good working relationship. She was very good at the business side; I was good at the technical side. She had her own resources internally but from time to time they were booked or the situation was more specialized than the generalists she had on staff.

In this case we were asked by one of her major clients - a defense contractor - to go to a remote site for a troubleshooting/installation. I was looking forward to the trip, not just because of the money (which was considerable) but also because it meant working with Lyssa more closely.

Normally she and I discussed projects and then I would complete them on my own, get the client to sign off on the work, and I would submit the work report and get paid. Very clean, very simple. This time, though, the client requested a representative from Lyssa's company and of course she was the best choice to come along and supervise.

Some techies might get defensive about this. After all, who wants their work second-guessed? I looked at it slightly differently, though. It gave me an opportunity to have Lyssa see the quality that I put into my work and prod her for more business. Plus, she was cute as hell, and not just a little flirtatious from time to time. Working as a consultant is a hard job for someone who's social and craves some familiarity and consistency, and I appreciated the opportunity to get to know her a little better.

She had always been professional, but then again I have always had a thing for professional women. It's sort of a grown-up librarian fantasy, I suppose, where the rigid, intelligent woman lets her guard down. Lyssa always gave me the impression that there was much, much more than underneath that professional demeanor.

Plus, she smelled nice.

"Thank you for flying with us. We know you have a choice of carriers..." the voice droned on, but the occasional quavering meant that I could swear that even for flight attendants this trip had been one for the storytelling at the bar for years to come.

We grabbed our things and headed off the plane. "I know this is only supposed to be a day trip," she said as she and I waddled up through the cabin. "But right now the last thing I want to do is get on another plane."

"Ain't that the truth," I agreed.

We grabbed a taxi and headed straight for the client's. The rain and wind whipped around the car with incredible viciousness, and we found ourselves feeling no more safer in traffic in this weather than we did on the plane. Fortunately, arriving at the customer site was uneventful, if a little slow, but as we arrived at the reception desk we had both felt like we were run through the wringer. We had been traveling for several hours, but due to the time zone changes it was only 9 a.m., and still had to put a whole day in.

Our contact came and brought us back to the computer center that we would be working. He was very clear about needing an escort if we needed to leave the center. "We like to joke that the security guards only have one bullet between them," he said, "but you never know who has it."

Lyssa and I exchanged glances, and cracked a smile. It was a horrible joke, but after the morning we had it was just what we needed.

Along the way to the data center we saw that the place really was locked down tight. Multiple security cameras in every hallway, it seemed like every square inch of the floorplan was monitored.

"I'm not sure why we need an escort with all this surveillance," Lyssa said.

Our host tried to be reassuring. "Oh, don't worry. You'll have freedom of movement once you're in the office. It's just if you need to go outside there that you'll need an escort."

Once inside the office he started showing us around. We were supposed to be hooking up equipment and cabling it from one room to the next. It was an ugly job, requiring squeezing under desks, behind cabinets, snaking through very small spaces. I was very glad that I wasn't claustrophobic.

True to his word, the client left us to complete his own work. Lyssa wasn't overly technical, so she was really acting as a representative of her company and my de facto assistant. I knew that with the work that was laid out in front of us, I could use all the help we could get.

The early morning stress had waned over the course of the morning, replaced with a very relieved banter between the two of us. Perhaps it was the extreme relief we both felt to be alive, but we seemed to be on a high and fed off each other. Within an hour the conversation was overtly flirtatious and giddy.

"Can you hand me that cable?" I asked at one point.

"The long one or the short one?" she asked.

"The short one," I answered.

"Oh, that's too bad," she said, with a mischievous pout. "I kinda like the long one."

Her playful eyes watched me carefully to see if she had crossed a line, but I encouraged her.

"Better hold on to the long one, then," I teased. "We might need it later."

She broke into a huge grin, lighting up her face.

The rest of the morning got worse. For the months we had known each other there had been a subtle tension between us, but it was unspoken and, quite frankly, ignored. She was married, I had a girlfriend, and that was that. There was an injection of something in our communication and relationship today, though, that I was convinced was brought on by our seemingly near-death experience.

As we approached lunch the flirting wasn't hidden at all. As we handed each other equipment we lingered our touch unnecessarily. When we needed to speak over the loud fans of the servers in the data center, we spoke closer than we needed to. The cold refrigerated air gave me an excuse to wrap my arms around her body to "warm" her up. When I held her she pressed her breasts into me just a bit harder, squeezed me just a little tighter, just a bit more than was required.

I found myself to be semi-hard and very horny for the rest of the morning. Professionalism dictated that we focus on the task at hand, as it was supposed to be only a one-day job, and we needed to get done that afternoon to catch our evening flight back home.

Lunch was no help, however, as she made a show of eating her food in the most sexual way possible. I kept looking around to see if she was attracting attention, but seemed like we were in our own world. The drones who worked for the customer were busy with their own daily lives and failed to notice us at all. We were contractors and unworthy of attention.

"Oh my," she said, as she began to tease her tongue over a banana. It may have been the most cliche action in the book, but it still worked on me. A few hours of flirting can go a long way for long-term blue-balls.

"You know, two can play that game," I said.

She raised an eyebrow. "Oh yeah? What can you do?" There was no subtlety to her challenge.

"Oh, I'd love to show you what I can do," I whispered conspiratorially.

She giggled. I raised a finger and told her to wait and went back to the buffet line to pick up a peach in the fruit bowl. Returning to the seat I cut the peach and half, and pitted it.

I placed the empty half of the peace down in front of her and looked at her with a devilish look. She started shaking her head, not quite believing that I was about to do what I was going to do.

"No," she said. "You're not..."

But I was. I picked up the peach and, looking quickly to make sure that we were unobserved, began to run my tongue around the divot where the pit had been. The metaphor was clear, and I saw her shudder.

Immediately she reached out and pulled my hand (and the peach) away from my mouth. Looking around, she couldn't stop smiling as she scolded me, "I can't believe you just did that!"

She started making a motion to get up. "We better get back to work," she said.

I really, really didn't want to get up at that point. All the flirting and touching and unspoken and unpromised intentions had had their effect on me, and I had no more control over my dick than a prepubescent schoolboy.

I winked. "I suppose that depends on your definition," I answered. I was casual on the outside, but extremely uncomfortable.

We returned to the office where we needed to connect up the workstations. This was the part that I was dreading, because it meant crawling under desks and behind cabinets to run cable.

"I'd like to see you run your cable," she said. It was cheesy, but coming from her I liked it.

"Any time, babe," I said "I'll run my cable to your port."

The puns were atrocious, but she laughed anyway.

I realized that I was going to have to crawl under the desk and start the cabling process, and so I made my way under the desk. "Oh god!" I exclaimed.

"What is it?" she said, concerned.

"Okay, well, that came out a bit stronger than I meant it to be," I confessed, trying to angle myself around the massive desk. "It's just it's a snake's nest down here."

It was, too. There were so many cables, so many tangles, I wasn't sure I would be able to figure out which wire went where. Like so many customers, they hadn't labeled anything and had just thrown the cabling behind the desk to hide it from view.

"Lyssa, I'm going to have to crawl in deeper in here," I said.

"Deeper? she asked, her voice still teasing.

I chuckled. "Yes. When I get myself sorted out, can you hand me the tools?"

"Sure. Let me take off my jacket."

This was a nightmare. I had to angle my body and wedge my shoulders behind the desk in order to reach the access panel. It was an awkward, uncomfortable position that was made worse when I tried to raise my arms over my head and in front to reach the patch panel.

I asked her for my tools, and felt her trying to climb under the desk as well. There wasn't a lot of room and she had to crawl over my legs to get close enough to hand me the small toolkit.

I felt her body moving up my legs, and she was pressed close. She had to shimmy up my legs, pulling herself up with her breasts pressing against my shins, then my thighs. It would have been bad enough had we not been flirting all day, but like a lover's slow tease I felt the unavoidable anticipation of the erection threatening to rise.

It dawned on me that the way we were angled her face was right in front of my cock at this very moment, even though I couldn't see her. Pinned as I was there was no way for me to move out of the way, and to my horror my cock sprung back to life, reaching for the woman it knew was in front of it.

I said to myself. Does she see? Can she see?

"Why helloooooo, James!" she purred.

She saw.

And she tormented. She continued her shimmy up my body until my cock rested comfortably between her breasts. I thought I was about to burst through my trousers.

Her voice was smooth as silk. "I brought you the kit," she said. "I see you brought your kit too."

I felt her breasts move as she breathed; it was that tight an enclosed space. "Yeah," I said. "I always come prepared."

Professionalism? What professionalism?

I tried to bring an arm back around the desk post to reach the kit she was handing me, but I found that my shoulders locked me in place. I was trapped with my arms straight up over my head. The only way I would be able to get out was to exit the way I came in. There was no way in hell I was going to be able to move backwards at all, especially with Lyssa there.

"Uh oh," I said. "I"m stuck."

"What?" Lyssa asked, an amused tone to her voice.

I sighed. "I said I'm stuck. I can't bring my arms down."

A pause. "Oh really!"

It was a very odd thing to hear her say, and then there was silence. I couldn't see anything except for the mass of cables and networking equipment in front of me, so I didn't know what she was doing. Then I felt her start to move down and I realized I was going to have to slide out of my situation, grab what I needed, and then slide back. I'd have to wait for Lyssa to extract herself from under the desk before I could do it, and I felt a mild annoyance of how much effort this was going to have to take.

But then she stopped. She hadn't moved more than a couple of inches.

"Lyssa?" I called. "Everything okay?"

I felt her hands press against my cock and my zipper being let down.

"Lyssa!" I hissed. "What are you doing?!"

She giggled. "Wow, James. How long has it been? I mean, if you have to ask..."

Her mouth engulfed my cock, and I was helpless to stop her. I was completely trapped under the desk and my arms were pinned above my head. I couldn't see a thing other than the mass of cabling and wiring. Well, that and all the funny lights going off inside my head from what she was doing.

"Lyssa, the cameras!" I warned.

I felt her mouth leave my cock for an instant. "I don't think they can see down here," she said, and went back to sucking me.

And oh, she was good. This was a woman who knew her way around the male anatomy and had an extra special talent for it. Her hands caressed my balls and she swirled her tongue around the head of my cock with each bob of her head.

Now, I've enjoyed light bondage before, but this was new. It was like my lower half of my body was inaccessible from my upper half, and I had no control. All the merciless teasing from the morning and lunchtime had left me primed and ready.

And she was phenomenal.

She had me to the boiling point in no time, and she wasn't messing around. She was all business as she sucked my cock with a single-minded purpose. Who knew when someone would check up on us?

I wasn't thinking about that, though. All I could think about was how good it felt to be in her mouth, her hands caressing my shaft and balls and her wonderful mouth, oh, her wonderful mouth.

Being constrained as I was, and not being able to see what she was doing, meant that I was in sensory overload. She sucked me hard, commanding the come out of me. And it obeyed.

My hips bucked against her and I emptied myself onto her tongue. She didn't stop what she was doing, and I got hypersensitive very quickly. My body took on a mind of its own as it bucked and convulsed against her. Finally she stopped and let my cock rest in her mouth, but it wouldn't go soft. It just throbbed and pulsed against her tongue and cheeks. Finally, she released me and tucked me back into my underwear and zipped me back up as best she could (always difficult with an erection).

"You have a nice banana, James," she said. I could hear the self-satisfied glee in her voice. I couldn't believe she had done what she did. I don't think she could believe it either.

"Let's trade places and show me your peach," I said.

"I'd love to," she said, "But we gotta finish this. We have a flight to catch, remember?"